Team Tenten
by Coralen
Summary: Team gai has been split up and tenten is the only remaining active nin, the others retired. Iruka suggests she takes a team and thus begin the adventures of team tenten. rated T for safety, may contain bad language
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: i don't own naruto in any way shape or form. This story is simply something i came up with during work.

Higurashi Tenten sat atop a roof overlooking the academy and reflected on the recent past of the village. She tapped her cheek thoughtfully while her memory painted a vivid picture of her recollections.

---flashback---

Konoha, with their allies, the suna, had launched a massive attack against otogakure. It had not been without losses, but they had managed to destroy the village that had reeked of evil. Her own sensei, gai, had died after killing the village's leader, orochimaru's replacement. He had needed to use the full eight gates to destroy the missing nin formerly from kumogakure. Her team-mates, lee and neji had been severely wounded protecting the jounin's fallen body. Lee's body was wrecked up worse than when he had fought gaara and neji had lost sight in one eye, as well as near fatal blood loss. Tenten had suffered numerous lacerations and a couple of bone fractures, faring better because she had been fighting as long range support for one of the other assault teams. She had only learnt of gai's death after they had regrouped and the two rivals had been found collapsed atop his body.

---flashback end---

She sighed and wiped a tear that threatened to fall. She should go visit them soon. They had both retired from active ninja life, neji to teach younglings from the hyuuga how to use jyuuken and their byakugan, lee to take over gai's hobby, a taijutsu dojo for young children.

She hopped lightly down from the roof and sighed again. She couldn't retire, she didn't think she could handle civilian life, but it was going to be hard. Luckily, her old academy sensei, iruka, had come by to talk to her during her stint in the hospital.

---flashback---

Iruka limped into the room on crutches, and sat down by the bed. He briefly read the report on the bedside table and sighed in relief.

"It looks like you'll made a full and speedy recovery, tenten. I'm very happy that you'll be fine. How do you feel?"

She had looked at him, tears welling up in her eyes, and then he leaned down and put his arms around her. She clung to him, weeping uncontrollably. Iruka had become a father figure to many of those who attended the academy, more so for those without parents and tenten had lost hers during the kyuubi assault. She had been lucky enough to be taken in by her father's brother, who owned higurashi weapons, a respected shop.

Iruka simply held her, patting her back and whispering soothing words to her. After the crying had stopped, he laid her back down carefully, not wanting to exaggerate her wounds. He had smiled again, a little sadly.

"We were team-mates, you know. Back in our genin days. He was always over the top, but he could usually back up his words. His skill with taijutsu was crazy, even back then."

Iruka had rambled for a little while, imparting some of his experiences with the slightly crazy taijutsu master of konoha. Tenten had smiled, even laughed from time to time during his recollection. The kind man who made teaching his lifestyle had helped ease her burden with his calming presence and way of talking.

When he had finally finished recounting the last dinner they had spent together before the team separated, tenten had finally noticed and inquired about his wounds, but he had simply grinned and said that another old friend had helped him out of a tricky situation. He offered to introduce her if she stopped by the academy.

---flashback end---

So she walked in the front door of the academy a few days later, bandages still in place along with a heavy coat against the chill wind. She pushed open the door and asked the secretary whether iruka was in his usual class. Hearing he was out to lunch with his friend, she smiled and thanked the young lady, leaving the academy. She started walking to ichiraku's and thought about naruto with a small sad smile. That goofy kid had really grown on her until she had harboured a small crush on him after defeating neji. His recent actions had made her worry about him a lot.

---flashback---

Naruto had come back with the konoha force sullen and depressed. He hadn't let anyone touch him, even though when he had been found, he had been covered in wounds. His battle gear had been ripped, torn and covered in blood. He had simply walked along silently, snapping at anyone who tried to touch him. Even when sakura had tried to talk him into letting her clean him up, he had yelled at her, telling her to leave him alone and when she had tried to force him he had shoved her to the ground roughly, screaming to be left alone. It had taken the rest of the rookie nine to hold him back, several of them coming off the worse for wear.

When they had returned, he had stood in front of the council with a fully charged rasenshuriken and threatened to destroy them all if they didn't make jiraiya co-hokage along with tsunade. The council had been cowed by the jinchuuriki's fearsome presence and had assented. When jiraiya and tsunade had come to him, screaming bloody murder, the blonde weapon had turned to face them and charged up a rasenshuriken in either hand before speaking just above the wind they created.

"it's the best thing to do for konoha right now. You two will do it, and then you will make the village stay away from me. If you do not, i will leave konoha and never come back."

The two had been afraid for the blonde teen who had become like a grandson to them. They had found that his idea had been incredibly smart in practice. Jiraiya brought in heaps of information, his spy network even more effective after finding their head now had the political power to bring his threats to fruition, not just threaten with his own power. Tsunade helped him use that information to better konoha while she had spent the rest of her time informing the village about naruto's wish to be alone. Any groceries he asked for were put directly on her tab, and he was not to be spoken to unless necessary or he spoke first.

No-one had seen him in a month except for a small grocery shop on the edge of town, that he had stopped in once for five minutes.

---flashback end---

She sighed again and flushed slightly when she recalled catching a few glimpses of his torso through his ruined clothes. She shook her head to clear the images and saw ichiraku's around a corner. There were three men sitting down, on was iruka, his crutches next to him. The others was a slim man with a pony-tail to the middle of his back and a massive man with blue tinted skin with a wrapped zanbatou next to him.

She recognised the two as itachi and kisame, legendary missing nin who were powerful enough to fight against bijuu by themselves. But iruka was laughing and joking with the two of them while ayame was flirting a little with an oblivious itachi. She was also helping him eat for some reason.

Tenten slipped a few kunai into her sleeve for easy access in case things went sour. Then, taking a deep breath, she sat down beside iruka and tapped him on the shoulder.

All three men turned to look at her, kisame grinning an easy grin and iruka smiling his usual smile. Itachi smiled a forced little smile, but he obviously couldn't see her, his eyes were bound with a thick bandage. Now she understood ayame's assistance with his meal. She had always been very friendly and he had been a local heart-throb before he had left the village so famously.

"Hey tenten. Allow me to introduce you to a couple of my friends. They won't hurt you, i promise. Kisame, you may have heard of, and, of course, you would know about itachi. i promise they won't hurt you, in fact, these two were the one who helped me out the other day."

Kisame offered his hand in a friendly gesture and she took it, marvelling at his strength, shaking her hand gingerly afterwards while he chuckled and mumbled an apology. Itachi bowed his head slightly lower than a standard welcome bow.

"Tenten, i must apologise. my partner and i once fought against your master, gai-sama. He was a great adversary and he prowess was enough to force us to retreat, no mean feat. My deepest sympathies for his passing."

His tone was very quiet and respectful and he kept his head bowed the whole time and he sounded genuinely sorry for her loss. Kisame, now recognising her from his fight against her team through a jutsu, bowed his head and offered his condolences and respect for the man as well. She wiped her eyes and smiled at them sadly.

"Yeah, gai-sensei was a great man. i appreciate your kind words, but i must ask how you came to be within konoha's walls and not being hunted by ANBU. Would you mind telling me?"

Iruka smiled and chuckled, but surprisingly, itachi spoke up over kisame's usually boisterous nature. His tone was easy and comfortable and he smiled as he spoke.

"Myself and kisame had become much greater friends than our 'masters' in akatsuki had wanted. After our recent involvement in the battle at otogakure, we spoke with uzumaki naruto in regards to the kyuubi. He swayed us to assist him in the fight and fought against my younger brother, sasuke. During the battle, naruto was forced to kill sasuke.

When he left after the battle, we remembered our conversations with him and decided that we were tired of fighting, tired of constant battle and being forced into war against for evil men. So, we assisted some refugees, recommending they come with us to konoha. We brought three families who joined us, some of them going on to sunagakure instead.

When we arrived, we bypassed the gate guards, wishing to avoid causing alarm and heard a commotion. The academy was being attacked by the remnants of otogakure, iruka fighting along with two other senseis. We jumped down to assist just as one of the senseis fell. Making short work of them, we rushed iruka and the other sensei to the hospital where we spoke to tsunade. We asked her to take us in."

"More like begged." Chuckled kisame "still, it worked."

"indeed, there are some restrictions on either side, but i offered two sets of sharingan eyes for the village, sasuke's and my own. She wanted me to keep my own eyes, but i didn't want those cursed things in my head and longer." Then he smiled slightly again. "it's more than one such as i deserve, but she's going to implant some ordinary eyes in for me. I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn't listen."

Ayame slapped the back of his hand sharply and then touched his cheek gently. "you shouldn't say that sort of thing about yourself. You're a good man, itachi." As an after-thought, she turned to kisame and smirked. "You're not a complete bastard either."

He chuckled and finished off his bowl of ramen while ayame began to feed itachi his. "Anyways, the long and short of it, we both agreed to join konoha as non-active ninja but swore fealty to the will of fire. Itachi wishes to become a sensei in the academy, while i wanna help the ANBU and anyone else who's willing to improve their swordsmanship. A few sensible restrictions, a daily mind-scan by a yamanaka to be sure of our allegiance, and jiraiya has a couple toads following us for a few weeks."

He squinted at tenten then, "if i recall, you're a weapons master, the weapons mistress of konoha, in fact. I'd be happy to help you with your swordsmanship once i get a dojo set up. First few lessons are free for you."

On the inside, she was giddy with excitement. She was in awe of the man's skill with his zanbatou and the rumours said he was just as strong with normal size blades. She bowed her head and enthusiastically thanked him, insisting on paying for his ramen this time in thanks.

Iruka and ayame shared a chuckle at their antics and even itachi smiled. Then iruka took a deep breath, turning to tenten and broached a topic she hadn't even thought of yet.

"What do you intend to do with yourself now? I'm sorry, but your team has officially been disbanded. You could continue on, joining other teams as necessary, but that kinda sucks for a young jounin."

"I hadn't really thought of it, but I suppose you're right. What do you think, iruka-sensei? What should i do with myself?" she sighed palmed her face. It was a big decision for her and it reminded her about the tragedy in her team right now.

Iruka put his hand on her shoulder and smiled.

"Luckily, i have an option available for you. Three of the refugees these two guided here were genin in the academy of otogakure. They're to be put together in a team when they graduate in a few weeks and i think you'd be a great sensei for that team. Would you consider it?"

She thought about it and it actually sounded nice. She'd be good at training people, what with the two training nuts running their butts off every day, working themselves into the ground. She wasn't sure she'd be great at it, but she figured she'd give it a go. So she smiled and hugged iruka.

"it sounds great. I'm not released to active duty for a while yet. I wanted to try to find naruto and cheer him up in the meantime. Any ideas where he is?"

The rest of the afternoon passed in easy conversation and to her surprise, she got along great with itachi and kisame. Kisame had a great sense of humour and itachi had a surprising wide streak of manners and kindness. The four had eaten lunch, stayed for a few drinks and a long, long conversation, then stayed for dinner afterwards.

The morning after, she had woken up in her uncle's forge. She liked to sleep directly above the hot forge. She always thought the heat helped her muscles relax and unknot. She ate a quick breakfast, showered gingerly, the water splashing over her cuts still stinging like crazy. Then she went out to search for one specific person to help her find naruto.

A/N: i don't know why i wanted tenten to be the sensei of this team, it's a team of oc's that i thought up at work. You'll meet them either the next chapter or the chapter after that. I'm not sure how long this story will be, but i do intend to write up a more detailed side story of itachi and kisame's journey and plea to join konoha to tsunade.

Fyi, jiraiya survived his battle with pein, but was in a coma for months afterwards at the toad mountain. I may change cannon several times over the story, but i'll write up anything you need to know in an author's note.

This is my first story i've posted, so please be gentle in your reviews. I'm not sure i'll be able to keep to any sort of schedule for posting but i hope you enjoy my story


	2. Chapter 2

Tenten sought out the inuzuka compound, searching for naruto's old friends, kiba and his ninken, akamaru. She figured the tracker would be able to find the blonde without too much trouble. Well, relatively little trouble compared to any of his other friends. For such a loud ninja, he was awfully good at being quiet when he wanted to be.

Not for the first time, she found herself lost in thought when she contemplated the enigma that was naruto. While he was incredibly friendly and got along with just about everyone, he was very shy about himself and not much was known about his private life. For example, although everyone knew he was a ramen fanatic, and that he loved ichiraku's ramen, nobody but iruka and the hokages knew where he lived. His skills in battle were incredibly well known, with him being the main force against otogakure, but very few knew where he trained himself.

She sighed and then smirked slightly, remembering seeing him in action against a couple oto nins, the three of them underestimating the blonde teen and him promptly decimating them with a clever use of kage bunshin and explosion notes. The trio had died without knowing what had happened. He had spotted her and threw a quick wave with a grin and a wink before charging back into the fray. She blushed, remembering the cheeky wink.

She walked up to the inuzuka compound and bowed to the guard, her manners ingrained into her reflexes by her uncle. The man was a grizzled ex-ninja, scars littering his exposed skin and that of his ninken, a huge dog that looked more like a wolf than dog, which lounged by his feet.

"what can i do you for, miss?" the man's voice was rough, almost gravelly. A scar on his throat had obviously damaged his vocal chords.

"do you know whether or not kiba and akamaru are in the compound?" her tone was polite, but friendly.

The man scratched the back of his head and thought a moment before clicking his fingers, remembering the teenager. "oh yeah, those two kids. They're way out the back of the compound, going through some light exercises. Still recovering from their part in oto." He chuckled evilly. "that tsume put him in charge of training the young kids until he's cleared for active duty. Really glad i didn't get put on that, this is much easier on these old bones."

She smiled. "surely not old. You can't be much older than my uncle. He's not even fifty and he says he's still got a century in him."

He threw back his head and laughed. "you're alright, girl. A good laugh is welcome on a cold day, but luckily this fur bag is pretty warm. Keeps my toes toasty." The dog rolled it's eyes and settled itself more comfortably against the man's feet.

He then gave her some directions to the field where kiba was supposed to be training the younglings. With a parting wave, he settled back against the wall he had been leaning on when she arrived and began to watch the few pedestrians again.

She thanked him and gave the dog a few pats to make up for the joke the man had made at it's expense and walked off to find the teen tracker. Surprisingly, she found him at the field he was supposed to be at, drilling the younglings in some basic taijutsu of the inuzuka. His right arm was bound in a sling against his chest and he had some bandages wrapping his forehead and neck. He had obviously seen some action at oto. Akamaru was surprisingly unhurt, though his fur looked like it had recently been singed a bit in places. The large canine was walking around, watching the kids and barking occasionally to kiba, who corrected flaws and sloppy footwork with a few words or nudges.

She chuckled at the kids, who looked exhausted. This must be the warm down after the training from hell that kiba had no doubt put them through. They may curse him now, but she knew they'd thank him come crunch time. She swore when she saw kiba had noticed her and she walked into the clearing, akamaru jumping at her and covering her in slobber as he greeted her enthusiastically. Kiba simply smiled and dismissed the kids, warning them to be on time tomorrow it'd be worse.

With a cry of happiness, Kiba hugged her and his faithful canine companion kept licking her face. She pushed them off, exaggerating her disgust at the dog slobber on her face while Kiba just kept laughing until he was wincing. It was a little known fact that the two got on exceptionally well, her being a tomboy and him having the kind of hobbies she got into.

"so ten-chan, what do you think? Should i make them kids work even harder next time?" he was chuckling as he said it.

"well, you do seem to be pretty good at teaching and the earlier they start training hard, the better it'll be in the long run. Say, why have you never taken a team if you're a decent teacher? Iruka-sensei suggested i take one and i was considering it. Think it'd work well for ya?" she flashed a grin at first, then got more serious as she spoke.

He scratched his head with his good hand and shrugged, wincing slightly. "they never showed me a team worth passing. Tested four so far. If you go for it, i'll give another team a try, just so you won't be alone in it."

She smiled at him "thanks kiba-kun. It'd be nice. Speaking of company though, got someone i want you to help me find. You got some free time to help me out with that?"

He thought for a second then snapped his fingers. "gotta be naruto. You got a thing for the blondie, ten-chan?"

She blushed deeply and pushed him over akamaru "no! You big jerk! I'm just worried about the guy, he's been through alot. Plus, he did save me once during the invasion at Otogakure. I want to see he's alright, that's all."

Kiba grinned up at her from the ground and jumped up "ok gorgeous. We'll find the blonde prankster in no time thanks to akamaru and my noses! Ok, we know his scent, so let's start looking for the freshest place!"

It was easier said than done to find his scent anywhere near fresh. They'd walked around konoha three times already, a pretty big feat for one afternoon and tenten felt a little useless. She basically kept kiba and akamaru company while they smelt out the blonde. It was turning out to be like trying to find the light switch in a completely dark, completely featureless room a square mile big. It was annoying, but it was fun catching up with the wild child and his dog. Almost like old times.

They found dozens of false leads, getting excited over every single one, thinking that was finally it, that they'd found it only to have it disappear several hundred feet later. It was almost like he'd had someone lay a whole heap of false trails to throw off exactly this type of thing. Then they found one that Kiba said had to be him, since it was only an hour old.

They followed it out and saw it end in a back alley but this one was different. Whereas the others had simply ended, this one just got continuously weaker, not disappearing entirely until this alley, it was almost like he'd been slowly erasing his scent as he went. They found it extremely odd until they heard three teens laughing nearby. They jumped over the fence, landing gingerly because of their wounds and found konohomaru, udon and moegi sitting and laughing in a city training zone.

Then kiba and akamaru simultaneously cocked their heads to the side while tenten greeted them cheerily. Naruto's friends had a habit of all getting along with each-other, across gender, personality type and even generation. Jiraiya and tsunade had often been seen laughing and joking with naruto's teenaged friends.

Akamaru suddenly lunged forward and pinned konohomaru to the ground while both he and kiba inhaled deeply.

"hey! What the hell! You can't do that to the kono-kun! Who the hell do you think you are, dogbreath!" came the assorted cries from the three younger teens.

Kiba ignored them and continued to breathe deeply, finally leaning down and sniffing konohomaru suspiciously.

"you weirdo! Homo! Pedo!"

At the last two insults he snapped, "Hey! Who the hell are you calling homo and a pedo!" and then he pointed exaggeratedly down and the brunette "and why the hell do you smell a little bit like naruto! Was it you laying all those false trails, you little bastard?!"

All three of the kids started violently, and now all of them were struggling to lift akamaru's much-larger-than-should-be-allowed frame off konohomaru. Tenten's eyes went very wide and then she crouched next to them.

"do you guys know where naruto is? We just want to see him, we're his friends and we've been very worried about him. Won't you please tell us?" her voice was very soft and udon seemed to slip slightly, his mouth opening, uttering a few illegible sounds and then snapping shut.

"boss made us promise. Said it was important. Needed time." Konohomaru said very quietly.

"what if moegi or udon left you alone and you didn't know how they were and you couldn't find them to check up on them? How would you feel then? Wouldn't you want to make sure they were ok, help them if you could?"

"kono-kun..." moegi looked at him sadly. "you saw how upset boss was. Looked lost, broken. Maybe this is what the boss needs..."

"she's right ko, we gotta tell them. Boss only told you where he'd be, you gotta tell them." Udon was frowning sadly.

Konohomaru sighed and covered his eyes with his arms. "you promise to fix the boss? Can you promise you'll make it better?"

Kiba was silent, but his expression was the same broken, grief stricken look anyone who'd seen death, even genocide, the mass and often senseless brutality of battle and war, would recognise. His voice was very soft and gentle, surprising tenten, who never thought the brash teen would use such a tone. "i'm sorry kono-kun. We can't promise that. No-one can. All we can offer is the best we can do, to share his pain and grief. There is no magical jutsu to fix that sort of damage."

Konohomaru's face was wet with tears and he drew shuddering breaths to calm himself. He hadn't been in the battle, but he'd seen that look on the boss's face and on the face of his friends who'd come back from that battle. He'd seen a few glimpses of the wounded ninja being brought back for recovery, bleeding and broken bodies limping with the aid of their friends or being carried by them on stretchers.

His voice was barely a whisper but the two shinobis heard him loud and clear. "he's at the namikaze and uzumaki combined family grounds. I don't know where that is, but i think it's outside the wall, near the cliff's western edge. You'll have to ask jiraiya-sama how to find it."

Tenten drew all three into a tight hug, her voice cracking as she spoke. "Thank you. I'll be sure to tell him how important he is to you three and how you wish him to feel better soon. Thank you."

Kiba stood to the side, his good hand clenched into a fist and his head hung, hair covering his upper face. Akamaru was leaning against him, showing his life companion that he'd always be there, through the good and the bad. Tenten moved towards him but his hand came up, gesturing her back while he wiped his face.

"it's... it's just hard, you know? I know that's what we're supposed to do as ninjas, but it's just so hard sometimes." He wiped his face against his forearm and looked at her with a small smile.

"but for now, naruto is hurting and we need to help him." Then he scooped her in for a rare sign of affection in the form of a one-armed hug.

A/N : phew, another chapter. Sorry for the delay, but i did warn you updates would be infrequent at best. I'm still working on my writing style, to me, my conversation flow isn't very natural, it's rigid and formal and something i hope to improve on.

I'm sorry i've yet to introduce tenten's team yet and as you may of guessed, i do indeed plan to have both naruto and kiba as team sensei's. Though it's still two chapters off. The next one will primarily deal with helping naruto get through his issues enough to get him to re-integrate into the group. Obviously this sort of thing affects every ninja to some extent, i mean kakashi's perversion is something a normal person might do, but normally, not publicly, nor to that extent. It's his way of dealing, same as gai threw himself into training and jiraiya is crazier than a psycho ward. It'd take a god like will to withstand the psychological trauma of taking so many lives and seeing much death and come through unscathed.

That's the main reason why gai's death made neji and lee retire. They simply couldn't handle the stress anymore. I had a complaint about that, but think about it. Gai was lee and neji's mentor. With neither of them having a father, he became their father figure as well and each strove in their own way to surpass him, it's only natural. Lee took it far further than neji did, but neji was always way more reserved than lee. The only reason tenten could return to duty was that she had her uncle and iruka as guiding figures. She still loved gai, but she had father-type support from others as well wherever lee and neji are orphans. Well, we know lee is, but neji's mother is never spoken of, so i always assumed she died during labor.

Anyways, i only managed to get this chapter out cos i had some time off work. Damn suppliers are so useless sometimes, i have to take time off cos they can't get their act together. The next update may take a while


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